06 July 2006

Delapan Kasih, Delapan Kisah, Bahagian Keenam

As luck would have it, I was preparing this little Delapan Kasih when ka..t tagged me. I suppose posting it now would be menyelam sambil minum air (two birds, one stone), wouldn’t it? Let’s start.

Eight foods from pMom’s kitchen (plus two)

Popiah. Light soft pastry around a vegetable stew (?) cooked to a secret recipe. Every popiah chef has her own recipe, and pMom is no different. As a side note, I heard popiah in Penang is sometimes flavoured with shrimp paste (heir ko), which gives it an interesting flavour. At home, our popiah is stiffened with a leaf of lettuce before rolling. I like the crisp, fresh flavour that comes with lettuce: it goes well with the chilli sauce, for some reason.

Pai Tee. This is finger food at most parties. Crispy pastry thimbles filled with that vegetable stew again. Aitelyu nyonyas are so fond of their overcooked vegetable stew…. Take a thimble in one hand, line it with half a leaf of lettuce then spoon in the veggies. Again, every chef has her own secret recipe.The thimbles are difficult to make. It is not simply a matter of finding the mold, mixing up a bucket of batter and then persuading some silly little plink to make thimbles. Dipping the mold into batter, then into hot oil is an art. The thimble just boils up out of nowhere from this thin layer of batter around the mold and you have to quickly get it out before it starts to burn (chau huay tar), preferably without breaking the brittle thing. Until I had mastered that little ballet, pai tee in our house had a distinctly smoky flavour to it.

Pandan Chicken. If I needed any more proof that we are nyonyas and babas, this is it. I simply can’t get enough of Pandan Chicken. I have no idea what goes into the marinade nor if the leaf-wrapped chicken meat is barbecued or deep-fried. This (and the huge amount of work that goes into it) is probably why pMom only makes it for family meals and not for parties. I would quite happily ignore everyone else at the table and be best friends with whoever is nearest to the Pandan Chicken. Nothing comes between me and my Pandan Chicken….

Lam Cho’. Take six eggs, tamarind, cili padi, onions and dried shrimp (hairbee). Soak the tamarind in water, then strain the resulting juice and throw away the hampas (the yucky stuff that remains). Chop everything else into small pieces, then mix and season to taste. The resulting egg salad is a deliciously eye-watering treat. Eating Lam Cho’ is how I acquired a taste for cili padi.

Tu tor thng. Pork maw, boiled up with rock salt, peppercorns, gingko (optional) and more cloves of garlic than you (or I) can count. Waste not, want not. Everything that goes into the pot can be, and often is, eaten.

Liver. This probably doesn’t qualify as cooking, but it is something I do remember. Finely chopped liver goes into a small bowl. Boiling water follows. After a suitable pause, it gets fed to plink. The theory is that it makes plinks grow up healthy. It tasted better than it sounds, I promise….

Tau Mio, fried with garlic. Tau mio is a wonderful little green vegetable, looking like a cute cross between clover and beansprouts with the inconveniences of neither (I personally wouldn’t eat clover). It has a delicate, cress-like flavour that is surprisingly helped by the garlic.

Tau Iu Kei. A little like ka..t’s Tau Yew Bak, only with chicken and garlic and TungKu…. Winn, did you hear me? TungKu-TungKu-TungKu-TungKu-TungKu-TungKu-TungKu-TungKu....

Fish fried with tau chneoh. Tau chneoh is a versatile fermented bean paste. It smells and tastes better than it sounds, really! If I remember correctly, you start by lightly pan-frying a fish then put it to one side. The fishy oil in the wok receives crushed garlic to brown. When that is done, a large amount of tau chneoh goes into the mixture and the cook gets out of the kitchen: there is a lot of fizzing and crackling from the tau chneoh as it joins the hot oil. When it’s safe to go back in, the sauce should actually be nice and loose. Stir until bubbling evenly, then ladle over pan-fried fish.

Perut ikan. Just like it says on the label, the main ingredient is fish maw. Using a secret recipe handed down from pGrandma to pMom, this strange, wonderfully tart dish gives absolutely no clue as to how it got its name. All the unsuspecting diner ever sees is an inviting island of vegables sitting in a mysterious, fragrant soup. Eat with rice. Amboi, best-nyer!